Nickolaou, who was the founder of Battle Creek's Oakland Hills Golf Club, died Saturday. He was 85.

Corrections and clarifications: This story has been updated with additonal details of Nickolaou's Kentucky Fried Chicken venture.

George Vello Nickolaou, the founder and proprietor of Battle Creek's Oakland Hills Golf Club and a Macedonian immigrant who ventured to the United States at age 19 with little money and a couple of strawberry plants stuffed in his pockets, died Saturday. He was 85.

Nickolaou endured years declining health as a result of Alzheimer's disease. A lifelong dancer and a well-regarded local storyteller, the disease slowed Nickolaou in recent years to limited appearances at Oakland Hills, a facility he regarded as his "fifth child." There and pretty much everywhere else, Nickolaou went by George Vello, or more simply as just George.

He grew up in the village of Nered, a town of about 1,000 people that later was forced by the Greek government to change its name to Polipotamon. His son, Vello Nickolaou, said George witnessed "a lot of brutality" inflicted on his village ahead of the Greek Civil War in 1946.

The conflict saw residents leave the area in droves to parts of Australia and the United States. George, for his effort, landed in Ohio.

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A young George Vello Nickolaou. Nickolaou died Saturday at age 85.(Photo: Provided)

"He realized by his middle teens if he was going to do anything with his life and not be under the thumb of the government, he’d have to immigrate," Vello Nickolaou said.

Nickolaou arrived in the U.S. with a war-shortened fourth-grade education, according to several people in his family. Vello Nickolaou said his father worked a number of odd jobs during his first few years. He washed dishes for 10 cents an hour; he strung phone lines for Ohio Bell Telephone Co.; and he worked on an assembly line hanging doors on refrigerators at a Westinghouse Electric Corp. plant.

Nickolaou later moved to Detroit, where he sold shoes at Sibley Shoe Co. and he became a dance instructor.

He met his future wife and Battle Creek resident, Mary Nicola, at a Macedonian convention in Fort Wayne, Ind., in 1954. He is believed to have told her "I'm going to marry you," to which she responded, "You're nuts." The two married a short time later on April 24, 1955. Nickolaou then worked as a deliveryman at Nicola's grandfather's business, the long-defunct Battle Creek Bread Co.

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A 1961 advertisement in the Battle Creek Enquirer for George Vello Nickolaou's restaurant, Vello's. He sold the restaurant in 1972.(Photo: Willard Library)

They had four children together: Vello, Louie, Rozanne and Mark. Mark, who died as an infant, and Mary preceded him in death.

"He could make a friend with anyone — he just had that gift," Lou Nickolaou said Wednesday, seated at the dining room table of his Battle Creek home along with his wife, Liz. "He would always be so uplifting and cheerful that people would love talking with Dad. That was the business side. On the Dad side, he's been a wonderful provider for his family."

Nickolaou founded several local businesses ahead of his golf venture in the 1970s. He and his wife ran Vello's Drive-In, Vello’s Casa Nova and The Apartment Lounge, all three of which were operated at 950 E. Columbia Ave. near Main Street. He sold that business to James Clevenger in 1972 and it continued to operate there until 1975, when the building was destroyed by a fire, Enquirer archives show.

Vello Nickolaou said his father ran an early iteration of Kentucky Fried Chicken in West Michigan, even being visited by the company's founder, Harland Sanders. Nickolaou had the opportunity to bring additional franchises to the area but decided against it.

"That would have been a huge, huge thing," Vello Nickolaou said. "Being that he was the sole proprietor (of his business), he passed on it. He didn’t regret it but wishes he was more savvy to move on an opportunity like that.

"Today you have to beg and buy to have a franchise, but it was offered to him."

However, as with some George Nickolaou stories, it's difficult to know where the facts end and where the embellishments of a well-worn story begin — though, this particular one happens to be dead on, Vello Nickolaou said.

"I’ve heard that story (about KFC)," Nickolaou's longtime friend and investment broker Rick Raymond said. "I didn’t know him at the time it happened. Those would be one of those things where I’d listen to it and wonder if it was fact or fiction."

Nickolaou's most notable work is for the design and operation of Oakland Hills Golf Club in Emmett Township, not to be confused with Oakland Hills Country Club in Bloomfield Hills. It is an 18-hole golf course consistently honored throughout its history as one of the area's best.

It opened in 1973 near Battle Creek's Sackrider Farms property.

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George Vello Nickolaou playing at round of golf at Battle Creek's Oakland Hills Golf Club.(Photo: Provided)

"My dad said, 'There’s a farm out by us, it’s for sale,' and then (Nickolaou) bought it," Sackrider Farms partner Bob Sackrider said. "After about a year or so, he decided to build a golf course. By golly, he rented bulldozers and ran them himself and built the golf course out there. Not being a golfer and not knowing much about golf, he did a very nice job."

Those who played the course also knew about Nickolaou's stringent rules for it. For example, golfers at his course were not allowed to tee off ahead of their own tee time or bring their own alcohol on the course and if they left a divot in the grass or a ball mark on the green, it was up to them to fix it.

Lou Nickolaou said those rules were the result of the pride he took in the course.

"If he was out there working — and he usually was — and he saw somebody not obeying the rules, he would train his customers," he said. "It was a simple course and there aren't a lot of rules. The operation just ran so smoothly."

The future of Oakland Hills Golf Club is not yet known. The facility was listed for sale for much of the past year, though it no longer is on the market. Vello Nickolaou declined to provide additional details other than saying the course plans to open for the season next month.

For now, it appears the fifth child remains in good hands — as it always has.

"He took every opportunity to learn about business, the stock market, about people," Vello Nickolaou said. "He did a lot of his own investing. If something was happening on the news, he’d think what business, what product might be affected by that. Any number of times he’d jump on something before stock analysts would. He didn't bury himself in comic books and girly magazines. He was a man.

"He read the Wall Street Journal and tried to learn about useful things that would make his life a little better and his family’s life better."